University of Pennsylvania's student-run newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, reports that school The records suggest President Donald Trump did not graduate in the top 15 percent of his class in 1968 and he did not make the dean's list, despite his reported claims.
"In 1968, The Daily Pennsylvanian published a list of the 56 students who were on the Wharton Dean's List that year," the newspaper notes. "Trump's name is not among them."
The school newspaper adds that the university's online alumni database lists 366 graduates of its business school in 1968, therefore, not being named among the top 56 means that Trump didn't "graduate first in his class," as he's reportedly claimed in past interviews. Nor does it appear that he graduated in the top 15 percent of his class.
The commencement program from 1968 does not list Trump as graduating with honors of any kind.
BETH J. HARPAZ/APThis March 20, 2016, photo shows the program for the May 20, 1968, graduation at the University of Pennsylvania, with Donald Trump's name listed among students receiving a bachelor of science degree in economics from the Wharton School.
For its report, The Daily Pennsylvanian also spoke with several of Trump's former classmates, who helped paint a picture of the kind of student the president appeared to be. Interviewees noted that he did not stand out academically and appeared to be most focused on his real estate dealings in New York.
Read the full report at The Daily Pennsylvanian.
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February 20, 2017
Addendum One.
Trump was always a mediocre student and a troubled boy. In his era, the proof that a boy was troubled was his family's decision to send him to Military School. Trump was sent to New York Military Academy. Even he acknowledges why he was sent there:
He was a 13-year-old with a history of trouble at school, and his father, Fred Trump, a prominent New York real estate developer, sent him to the academy to be straightened out.
As an adolescent, I was mostly interested in creating mischief," Donald Trump [or more accurately Tony Schwartz] wrote in "The Art of the Deal."
How he functioned is the subject of Washington Post article cited above. Here is more of what the article states:
From the moment 17-year-old Donald Trump was named a captain for his senior year at New York Military Academy, he ordered the officers under his command to keep strict discipline. Shoes had to be shined. Beds had to be made. Underclassmen had to spring to attention.
Then, a month into Trump's tenure in the fall of 1963, came an abrupt change.
The tall, confident senior with a shock of blond hair was removed from that coveted post atop A Company and transferred to a new job on the school staff — another prestigious assignment, but one with no command responsibilities. He moved out of the barracks and into the administration building, swapping jobs with a fellow high-ranking senior who took command of Trump's old group.
Former cadets recall the change differently. They say school administrators transferred Trump after a freshman named Lee Ains complained of being hazed by a sergeant under Trump's command. School officials, those cadets say, were concerned that Trump's style of delegating leadership responsibilities while spending a lot of time in his room, away from his team, allowed problems to fester.
"They felt he wasn't paying attention to his other officers as closely as he should have," said Ains, who lives in Connecticut and works in the aerospace industry.
Bill Specht, the cadet who switched places with Trump, recalled an administrator telling him about the hazing incident and saying that "the school has decided that they are going to make a switch."
The incident, previously unreported, offered an early glimpse into a pattern that would follow Trump through much of his life and has been evident in his rise as a leading Republican presidential candidate. Often the center of controversy, he finds a way to emerge by declaring victory and claiming success, even if the facts are more complicated and some people around him are left with sour feelings.
Addendum Two.
As a weak graduate of The New York Military Academy, Donald Trump wasn't accepted at any college except the local Catholic college, Fordham in the Bronx, in NYC.
He went there for 2 years, and made no friends. This was the subject of a well researched article in the Daily News, entitled Donald Trump thought he was too good for Fordham University, and current students would like to forget the GOP frontrunner went there.
We see a recognizable Trump there. According to one of his classmates,
He stuck out because of his fancy clothes, his personal car and his extremely wealthy family. Members of the squash team were in awe of Trump's extravagance when he took out his golf clubs and started carelessly hitting balls into the river on one of their trips...
He certainly didn't stand out academically:
Despite finding his place athletically, Trump by no means thrived academically in his two years on Rose Hill. He went through the motions, content with the convenience of a school close to home and not at all proud to be there — ironic because Fordham was the only school to accept him.
How a mediocre student at Fordham came to be accepted at the Wharton School is a story that waits to be told. Did Fred Trump's money came into play?